The Dark Angel[i] Slithering through the leadwort and scurvygrass[ii]; Stumbling on the stubble of a Saturday night binge, she mumbles a curse across the nettles’ needles A cross to cross across the green. She leans against the old stone wall munching on rhubarb from a rusty pail. The promise of a pie floats beyond the hills. The piper’s pipe rests on the edge of the well. A trace of tobacco rides the air. Yaowarat[iii], 2020 (In the Year of …
Tag: Nineteenth Century
Moby-Dick: An Ambergris Digression * Herman Melville * Excerpt
Although it is today considered one of the “great books,” Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick; or, The Whale was not a success during his lifetime. On the contrary, it was a disappointment to his readers that fancied his earlier light-hearted (and largely fictional) travel adventure books set in the South Pacific. During the writing of Moby-Dick (1850-51), Melville met Nathaniel Hawthorne and took time away from his novel in progress to review the short-story collection Mosses From an Old Manse, which just …
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Dorian Gray’s Psychology of Perfumes, from the 1891 novel by Oscar Wilde, Scent Aesthete Extraordinaire
“The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn,” is the opening sentence of The Picture of Dorian Gray, so you know Oscar Wilde knew how to use scent to set a scene! The gothic novel was decried as indecent, because of its current of …
The Art of Perfumery, Introduction & History I, by G.W. Septimus Piesse, 1857
*This introduction to The Art of Perfumery (1857) comes from the Project Gutenberg edition. We’ve referred to our author, G.W. Septimus Piesse before, quoting with great admiration his forward-looking thoughts on the problematic secrecy of perfumery–a quote that you will read in context here. This introduction to a comprehensive manual and recipe book for Victorian perfumers inspires a love of scent that is at the heart of Aromatica Poetica.* THE ART OF PERFUMERY, AND METHOD OF OBTAINING THE ODORS OF …
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James Holman: Son of Apothecary Turned World Famous Blind Traveler
” If you wished to voyage the world in a mindflight instant,” writes James Holman’s biographer, “you needed only to step into the Exeter establishment of John Holman, Chymist & Surgeon, close your eyes, and breathe deep the mingled scents of all known continents. It was an apothecary in the very latest mercantile fashion, selling not only medicinal products but just about anything that could be powdered, dried, or otherwise prepared for transport from afar. Cayenne pepper and soy from …
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